I Still Love New England

I grew up in Massachusetts and have lived in California since 2001. Although I still have family in Massachusetts, I have been a New England Patriots season ticket holder since 1999, which brings us back to New England multiple times per year.

Hotel costs were killing us during these visits. Our standard trip has always been a two-week trip, and we often paid close to $5,000 for a two-week stay in a budget hotel. In 2018, we decided we had enough of the hotel expenses.

I made a trip there in January 2019, and my number one priority was finding a condo we could purchase that would cut our housing costs. I looked at dozens of places, and my primary concern was not finding any condos in secure buildings. We wanted a secure building because we would only be there part-time.

A few days before the end of that trip, I saw a listing for a two-bedroom condo in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. I told our realtor I wanted to see it before I left, and she got me in there on the last day of the trip.

That condo was perfect. It had two bedrooms that were the perfect size. It had two parking spots, and residents had to use a key fob to enter the building. My family is in Taunton, Massachusetts, and North Attleboro was a short drive away. We closed on the condo near the end of February 2019. The mortgage for the condo is less than half the cost of a one-week stay in a budget hotel.

My wife and I were both there for the closing. My wife spent most of her childhood in Southern California. On the move-in day, we woke up to a winter wonderland. It had snowed 14 inches overnight, and we had to get all the cars out of the parking lot before 9:00 a.m. so they could plow it.

New Englanders can be standoffish, but it was all hands on deck that morning. Some residents are retirees, and the heavy snow was too much for them. Those of us who were decades younger shoveled out multiple cars. That is a fast way to make friends with your new neighbors.

Not only was that a rough introduction to living in New England for my wife, but how could the movers move us in? The movers squashed her fears and didn’t let 14 inches of snow impact their efforts. We were completely moved into the condo that day.

From 2019 through 2023, we used the condo as is. Normally, when we buy a property, we make lots of upgrades as soon as we close on it. This was different. We knew we would only use the property two to six months per year, so we elected not to do upgrades after the close. Also, we did not know any contractors in that area.

When we arrived for our most recent trip there for two weeks, the condo met us with two problems that put us back into our upgrade mode. The shower neck had sprung a leak, and the linoleum tile in the foyer had buckled. Sigh.

We checked with cousins to see if they had plumbers they used. Unfortunately, they all had plumbers local to my cousins' towns. None of them live in or around North Attleboro. On Thursday of our first week, we couldn’t believe our luck. A plumber truck was in the parking lot with North Attleboro under its logo.

My wife called the plumber and left a message. She received a call back that night, and the plumber showed up the next day, on Friday morning.

The plumber spent 10 minutes fixing the leak and 25 minutes telling us about his contractor buddy, who could handle the tile problem. The contractor called us that afternoon and told us he would come by on Saturday morning.

When he arrived, he gave us a choice. He could fix the eight tiles in the foyer where the problem occurred or replace the flooring with something newer. My wife and I have hated that linoleum since day one. It was the original flooring installed in 1988. We opted to upgrade to ceramic tiles.

Our only concern was the work that needed to be completed by the last Friday of our trip (only 7 days later). We agreed to a price, and he got to work. He started demolition that same first day and had it done by the end of Sunday. My wife had picked out tiles she liked, and he picked them up so he could start the installation on Monday.

He had other jobs to complete between Monday and Thursday, but thankfully, he squeezed in our job, too. The job scope covered the kitchen, foyer, and bathroom. He started in the kitchen first and then alternated between the foyer and bathroom to allow us to continue to use those rooms.

On the last day, all he had left were some filler tiles and grout. Such luck for him and us. He lived locally. He used the tools at his house to cut partial tiles. We were jumping over-drying tiles for five days, trying not to knock the separators off. By Friday night, we couldn’t believe how good the tiles looked. The contractor did a fabulous job. During this job, we found out that he didn’t just do tile but ran his own construction company.

The rest of the condo, containing the living room, dining room, and two bedrooms, now looked old. We asked the contractor to do the work during our next trip in September. We will complete the upgrades by having the whole condo painted, rugs removed, and wood flooring installed throughout the rest of the condo.

Our trips to Massachusetts are always busy, but September will be even busier. We have two Patriots games to attend, all the condo work to do, and family and friends to visit. We will finish it with an East Coast cruise in October. The condo work serves two purposes. It lets us enjoy the condo more by removing everything we complained about.

We also know the condo will show better if we must sell it someday. We believe that day is far off, but making the condo a mini version of our home in California will be nice. Fresh paint and flooring will do that for us.

I love spending time on the East Coast. I miss the seasons in California but get my seasons by making trips in the spring, summer, fall, and winter. This recent trip reminded me of something I always think of when traveling east to west. When we fly to the East Coast, it is a sea of green. When we fly back to the West Coast, all we see is brown—two very different places.